28 responses so far ↓

• 1 ctm // Dec 23, 2008 at 7:39 pm

  From The Plan:

  “Finally, Saturn, which has performed below expectations,…”

  So “very successful” is the same as “performed below expectations”?

• 2 Markac // Dec 23, 2008 at 8:54 pm

  It kind of explains why there is little push to sell new Saabs and no real commitment to introduce any new models. Even the 9-3 crossover doesn’t seem to have a confirmed release date.

  A holding company made up of the Swedish government and Investor AB would be a good Interim solution for Saab. Also in the meantime GM Europe probably needs to retain a small stake in Saab. GM will have to remain Saabs main parts supplier for some time to come. When the economy picks up a bit, I’m sure there will be some parties interested in buying Saab.

• 3 Saabboy1 // Dec 23, 2008 at 9:11 pm

  I think GM has taken all they can from Saab. Cadillac is evidence of that. Why would they sell the BLS in direct competition with the 9-5 over Europe? I hope Saab finds a decent suitor that will help develop the brand and keep its original roots intact. I have no doubt that GM will go into Chapter 11 by the end of March.

• 4 WooDz // Dec 23, 2008 at 9:25 pm

  GMNA and GME should split.

  OPEL can take on Saturn and Saab as a leaving present. GME should be granted the use of any suitable GMNA production plant as compensation for lending GMNA 2bn Euro over the years. Saturn and Saab dealerships can then be combined.
  Saab as a somewhat own entity and with the injection of Swedish Government aid to release new ecologically responsible vehicles will still have the use of GM resources to reduce overhead costs. This combined with the flexibility to loan-out their advanced engineering dept. to other manufactures will make Saab a profitable company.

  OPEL needs Saab’s engineers and I am in total belief that the Insignia is without doubt a better vehicle thanks to the NG9-5 sharing that platform.

  I’m sorry but after hearing the stuff that has come from GMNA lately I am now convinced that my previous comments about GM were wrong. I’ve heard reports than Mark LaNeve has said that Pontiac has lost it’s way. He said the same about Saturn and Saab. So that’s 3 brands under GM that has lost it’s way. Or to put correctly, 3 brands that have been neglected under GM whilst they blow money on their US brands in Europe. The only reason Chevy is doing well in Europe is because it’s being run by GME. GMNA couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. They have absolutely know idea what other markets expect from a vehicle and so continue to sell LHD vehicles in RHD markets, whilst at the same time only offering high MPG gasoline models. e85 applications are sold in all brands except their eco-friendly brand Saab and to rub it in, they couldn’t even ship the new 9-3 with a DI 2.0ltr Turbo engine; yet can find the money to ship a hulking 2.8V6 all the way from Melbourne to Trollhättan?
  They have one good Cadillac model the CTS and the rest is just crap. GMC may as well be made defunct as they are just Chevy’s anyway. From the great name plate that was Pontiac with monumental models such as the GTO and thanks to ‘Knight Rider’, the Firebird Trans Am that still creates a warm glow of memories for the Y-Gen population, are now are just a scrap handful of FWD Econo-boxes. Everything GM’s accountants have touched has turned to shit, because they counted the beans and starved all their products of character and soul. Everything the designers came up with to drive GM’s products forward got turned into little noughts and ones and the outcome was always “The computer says no.”
  It doesn’t matter what product you look at, even the Corvette has defects which makes buyers question the viability of price over luxury when in reality here should be no questioning required, It should be better then a Mercedes SL. It’s a muscle car for heavens sake, this is what Americans are world renowned for and yet GM still missed the post. Then just as the company is on it’s knees and begging for some help, you would think they would see some rationallity but alas no. GM in their infinite wisdom think the best option is to drop any brand that has any good global potential and concentrate on their so called ‘Core’ brands that sell in negligible numbers outside North America.
  So another consolidation plan with no ambition to attack the global markets. I guess the belief is to stabilise the home market then concentrate on other territories. The problem is those products don’t sell outside of the US because they are basically crap. A KIA Sorento has more going for it then the majority of GM’s North American products. So GM use your money wisely and prepare for a soft landing when is all goes bang.

• 5 Ubermich // Dec 23, 2008 at 9:54 pm

  Woodz nailed it. Just dead-on.

  And I think that’s what really tickles my inners. Even AFTER GM sells off Hummer, Saab, and Saturn, and AFTER GM shutters Pontiac, GM still won’t be profitable. So after we see our beloved brand sold off to some Russian company, we can watch GM implode from the top down.

  Let’s face it, we all know that the deatchwatch is a little over-exaggerated, but we all know there has always been a little truth in there. Now that little truth is a much larger truth.

  You guys also need to come to the realization that once Saab is sold, they won’t be Saabs anymore. GM has already suggested that the engineering and product development would stay with GM. So whoever buys Saab has to turn around and try to “steal” the engineers from GM. I don’t know what laws exist preventing engineers from then re-engineering the new 9-5 or something of the sort.

  Dear GM,
  Thank you for purchasing my favorite car line on the planet…

  And running it into the ground.

  Truly Yours,
  R.

• 6 saabyurk // Dec 23, 2008 at 10:51 pm

  Agree with WooDz, and I’m worried about what Ubermich said, sounds too possible.
  Should we start a letter writing campaign to GM to put Saab with Opel? Not my favorite choice, but better than no Saab at all.

• 7 Philip J // Dec 23, 2008 at 11:07 pm

  An artical in a danish business newspaper (Borsen), Eric Geers, the Director of Communications for Saab Automobile AB, is quoted saying that GM now have 3 month to find a buyer for SAAB, and preferently a european buyer.
  I can´t wait to ses who might be interested.

• 8 Arild // Dec 23, 2008 at 11:30 pm

  All GM-executives talk nonsense (including those at Saab). They will say anything to keep the media reports positive.

  How many times haven’t we heard that GM is “completely behind Saab”? That new models are just around the corner? That the future is bright? They have fed us this nonsense for years now, and don’t forget that the last new car was the 9-3 launched in 2002!

  If GM can save or make money by selling or shutting down Saab, Saturn or Hummer, they will. They don’t care about the history of the brands, or the dealers, or the workers at the factories or us, the die-hard fans.

  I envy the Porsche og BMW followers. Those car companies enjoy leadership with insight and enthusiasm as well as financial wisdom.

• 9 Paul Guinnessy // Dec 23, 2008 at 11:43 pm

  Just as well my lease is up in July, that gives me three months to consider whether to keep the car. I think you might see Saab sold, but with Opel. In terms of a European company its the only logical choice (Opel/Saab).

• 10 Kroum // Dec 24, 2008 at 2:09 am

  WooDz nailed it indeed.

  The big question now is who is the buyer. There must be parties that have already expressed interested and have started looking at the books and technical drawings.

• 11 Karen // Dec 24, 2008 at 2:26 am

  WooDZ and Ubermich express many of my [expletives deleted] thoughts.

  However, it might behard to find a definitive solution for Saab in view of the global downturn in auto sales:

  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/business/23auto.html

  “…The Italian company [Fiat] acknowledged this month that its car business needed a partner to survive the economic crisis….”

  Back to the snow belt. There are still thousands of New England homes without electricity since the ice storm on December 11.
  I was lucky - got my power back in 24 hours, but spent a lot of time wondering why, with a tank filled with fuel oil, another with propane, and a Saab filled with gasoline, I was so dependent on a bit of electricity to power both my heat furnace and propane-fueled hot water. Why couldn’t I have a bank of rechargeable batteries powered by a small propane generator for back-up? I finally found such technology does exist in conjnction with isolated solar-powered off-grid vacation cottages! Should not be that hard to find a solution.

  Then I read this today - in which a Prius became a very effective emergency generator.

  So, add this concept to my future dream Saab (GM has the technology for their Volt - and it’s not like I’d ever drive a Voplt or Prius in a half inch of snow??!!), and I bet Saab sales in the northern half of America would soar…
  http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/prius-its-not-just-a-car-its-an-emergency-generator/

  “Prius: It’s Not Just a Car, It’s an Emergency Generator
  By Kate Galbraith
  The Prius has a new use, and it does not involve driving. The Harvard Press — which serves the Massachusetts town of Harvard as opposed to the university — reported that the car’s battery helped keep the lights on for some locals during the recent ice storms.

  The newspaper reports that John Sweeney, a resident who lost power, “ran his refrigerator, freezer, TV, woodstove fan, and several lights through his Prius, for three days, on roughly five gallons of gas.”

  Said Mr. Sweeney, in an e-mail message to The Press: “When it looked like we were going to be without power for awhile, I dug out an inverter (which takes 12v DC and creates 120v AC from it) and wired it into our Prius.”

  According to the newspaper, “the device allowed the engine to run every half hour, automatically charging the car battery and indirectly supplying the required power.”

  In fact, this development, which comes at a tough time for Toyota, which makes the Prius, may not be not as strange as it sounds. Mr. Sweeney’s tinkering is along the lines of the “smart grid” technology that many utility executives and other experts say lies in our future. The idea is that the battery of an electric car — a plug-in, in most smart-grid scenarios — can feed power to the electricity grid when the grid needs it.

  Even President-elect Barack Obama has endorsed this idea, as seen toward the end of this YouTube clip in which he said: “We’re going to have to have a smart grid if we want to use plug-in hybrids — then we want to be able to have ordinary consumers sell back the electricity that’s generated.”

  Mr. Sweeney, out of necessity, got there first.”

  Surely there is a way to find a billion USD to save Saab…where are the engineers?

• 12 Troll96 // Dec 24, 2008 at 3:47 am

  Saturn is Opel’s outlet to NA and already has the dealerships to help expand Saab’s sales & service if they combined their marketing efforts. An “all-Euro” threesome. If they keep Saturn’s customer friendly ambiance and no-haggle pricing, they might even make a buck. Not a bad outcome, all things considered.

• 13 Nate 9-3 // Dec 24, 2008 at 4:29 am

  Troll96,

  I like that outcome. I would assume that the independent SAAB dealers would be able to stay independent and come on board, too.

• 14 Warren // Dec 24, 2008 at 4:39 am

  Perhaps this is just a Canadian thing, but I find it interesting that it is already the case in Canada that all Saab dealerships exist in conjunction with Saturn dealerships. In fact, it has been that way here for nearly a decade. Hopefully the synergy of having a volume European product like Saturn as well as a performance/luxury European product such as Saab under the same roof catches on and yields dividends elsewhere as well.

• 15 Tedjs // Dec 24, 2008 at 5:57 am

  “Find the right business model.”?

  Well jeez Mark, that is an end of the year newsflash/wake up call to all of us.

  Saturn has been starved for product pretty much forever, so until a few years ago nobody noticed them at all. The division has just started to gain some notice for not building plastic cars with lackluster powertrains and strange (Saturn SC) dash clusters borrowed from the weirdo’s at Scion.

  GM just donated an Aura ‘test vehicle’ to our college and everyone who sees it for the first time really does say - “Is that a Saturn?”

  Maybe “the right business model” might involve producing a quality product and marketing it properly? Investing in the brand?

  LaNeve wins the month with that line… Good job.

• 16 1985 Gripen // Dec 24, 2008 at 6:06 am

  A Saab/Opel/Vauxhall/Saturn partnership would work on a level too as Saab can be to Opel/Saturn/Vauxhall what AUDI is to VW. They could share platforms and take advantage of economies of scale (just as AUDI does with VW) as long as they don’t share from the parts bin any parts the customer can see or touch.

  Funny how nobody claims the A4 is just a tarted-up Volkswagen like they claim Saabs are tarted-up Opels even though Saabs have less Opel content in them than AUDIs have VW content…

• 17 cfk // Dec 24, 2008 at 6:27 am

  Our local Saab/Cadillac dealer actually no longer has a single new Saab on display!!! Instead they have put a CTS in the Saab display area (in South Africa). Talk about an abvious signal that they are dropping the brand. I wonder if the new owners of Saab would have a case against GM for neglect of the brand equity?

• 18 zippy // Dec 24, 2008 at 6:28 am

  I like your idea 1985 Gripen but I fear that Saab is toast and if it comes to that awful outcome I hope it takes the whole of GM - and their expensive greedy North American workforce - with it!!

• 19 Rocky // Dec 24, 2008 at 6:56 am

  I find it interesting that throughout the last few months, with all the attention placed on saving the American automobile industry, so little ink has been given to the cars themselves. My 1969 Saab Sonett, 1972 Saab 96, 1994 Saab 900 S, and my current 1997 Saab 9000 CSE Turbo were all a blast to own and some of the best-imagined and trouble-free cars of their time. When I read about it in the NY Times Dec. 21 edition, this year’s new Lotus Exige S 240 seemed to be conceptually much like my ‘69 Sonett, and many of today’s newly hatched hatchbacks can thank Saab’s rational Swedes for espousing that design’s practical roominess (until GM’s dimwits killed it just prior to its gaining new market momentum). Typical GM lack of foresight. The last decade of GM’s Saab ownership has proven to be a slow-motion strangulation of all the Swedish heritage in the brand. With GM’s history of shutting down a division just as it makes a comeback (Oldsmobile), I’m not surprised that the recently reinvigorated Pontiac, the tightly-targeted (though power-hungry) Hummer and now the distinctly conceived Saturns and Saabs are earmarked for sale or closing, leaving us the bland me-too choices among Chevy, Buik, and GMC. The clueless, mass marketing mindset of those GM drones who were dismissive of Saab is now on the Bush presidency’s reluctant life support. I doubt whether we’ll see GM reinvent itself without a forced Chapter 11 that fires the top executives and finds a savior CEO. The type of imaginative and audacious leader I’m thinking of is someone like Apple’s Steve Jobs, who, if he were asked to recreate a car company, would surely come up with one that manufactures vehicles emblematic of Saab’s and Apple’s products — sleekly designed, user-friendly, futuristic, safe, and ecologically relevant — in other words, must-haves for consumers whose discriminating taste and common sense allow them to settle for nothing less. Maybe that’s also the road to take to save not only GM but all three American car companies.

• 20 Markac // Dec 24, 2008 at 7:24 am

  Gripen the Saab/Opel/Vauxhall/Saturn (and even Holden) idea might work, but I fear that Saab wouldn’t become the “Audi” of the group but a another Seat. Seat is largely forgotten in the VAG, even Skoda now has a higher prominence. For too long Saab has been left and forgotten and it needs to “shine”. I don’t think it’ll be able to shine in that group.

• 21 Tedjs // Dec 24, 2008 at 9:27 am

  And on the note of ‘strategic review’, it is interesting that I have been seeing quite a bit of advertising for the 9-3 running on CNBC here in the USA lately. Starting with this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CuGQmaEkec

  They just aired another one today that talked about the numerous safety awards the 9-3 has won - and the fact the Saab 9-3 is “made by GM - surprised?” which is their current ad theme here in the USA that supposed clean up their image with the public. A (horrible sorry Swade) example of the campaign can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVD0leslW-4 – best I could do on short notice.

• 22 Markac // Dec 24, 2008 at 1:05 pm

  Tedjs: If you really have to watch a Cadillac commercial, try this one:: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4DfGknbfFYE&NR=1

  Quick before Swade bans them from this blog.

• 23 Markac // Dec 24, 2008 at 1:22 pm

  Now here’s one to flush those rotten Cadillacs out of the system.

• 24 Markac // Dec 24, 2008 at 1:44 pm

  Speaking of Saab ads, this one has a whole lot more poignancy now than when it was released. If you listen, the words really relate to Saab.

  GM please release Saab…

• 25 MarkS // Dec 25, 2008 at 1:01 am

  Karen - very interesting “generator” concept! We lost our power for over a week and still have no phone or internet service at our house. My sister (in Rindge, NH) just had power restored last night! Although it wasn’t used as a generator, my Saab blasted through the nasty conditions without a problem….right along with AWD trucks and SUV’s!

  Markac - That Viggen advert is STILL exciting!! I hope Saab has the opportunity to build a worthy successor to the 3-door Vig!!
  

  Merry Christmas and happy Saabing to you all-

  Mark

• 26 Tedjs // Dec 25, 2008 at 1:06 am

  Markac, did you know that Kate Walsh is back on the market? She did a nice job in that commercial.

  I have never seen Kate cruising around in a CTS around these parts of the country, although I wish I had my camera in the car with me the other day. There was an 80 year old (estimate) women in a new black CTS half in a turning lane and half in a regular traffic lane looking downright confused while trying to maneuver through holiday traffic. Your ‘typical’ American Cadillac customer… Her husband must have had the Buick for the day.

  I like the CTS as it great handling/driving car, but you see something like that and you are glad you are not in one of your own. Make GM just needs to find “The right business model” for the brand?

• 27 Markac // Dec 25, 2008 at 8:23 am

  MarkS and Tedjs: I hope the ‘new’ Saab (whatever form it takes) does make a worthy successor to the Viggen and maybe they can get Kate Walsh to advertise it? Well if she isn’t 50 by then. Not that there’s anything wrong with 50, I’m almost that myself!

• 28 cfk // Dec 26, 2008 at 5:56 am

  The line in the advert “made by GM - surprised”. Sounds like GM is trying to get whatever remaining brand equity Saab has left to rub of on GM before selling the brand.

Leave a Comment